Welcome to Sott.net
Sat, 23 Oct 2021
The World for People who Think

Science & Technology
Map

Beaker

New technology can prevent GM organisms from breeding with their natural counterparts


PhysOrg
Thu, 12 Oct 2017 17:31 UTC
organisms
A major obstacle to applying genetic engineering to benefit humans and the environment is the risk that organisms whose genes have been altered might produce offspring with their natural counterparts, releasing the novel genes into the wild. Now, researchers from the University of Minnesota's BioTechnology Institute have developed a promising way to prevent such interbreeding. The approach, called "synthetic incompatibility," effectively makes engineered organisms a separate species unable to produce viable offspring with their wild or domesticated relatives.


Comment: Will this new species be able breed with others of it's kind?


Synthetic incompatibility has applications in controlling or eradicating invasive species, crop pests and disease-carrying insects as well as preventing altered genes from escaping from genetically modified crops into other plant populations. The results were published online today in the journal Nature Communications.

The technology uses a new class of molecular tools called "programmable transcription factors" that make it possible to control which genes are turned on and which genes are turned off in an organism. If an engineered organism mates with a wild counterpart, the transcription factors render the offspring unable to survive by activating genes that cause their cells to die.

"This approach is particularly valuable because we do not introduce any toxic genes," said Maciej Maselko, a postdoctoral scholar from Smanski's lab who performed the work. "The genetic incompatibility results from genes already in the organism being turned on at the wrong place or time."
      Read More...
Question

Quantum physicists say that living in a matrix is impossible

Bryan Nelson
Mother Nature Network
Sun, 01 Oct 2017 17:20 UTC
Matrix
© REUTERS/ Kacper Pempel
It's a question that philosophers have been asking since the dawn of philosophy itself: What's real? Is the world as we perceive it really the world? And how can we know one way or another?

The latest version of this age-old conundrum, popularized in the 1999 sci-fi film "The Matrix," puts things in modern technological terms: Could reality be nothing more than a computer simulation?

This is, technically, merely a theoretical question. No computer around today has the computing power to simulate the entire universe, not even close. But could such a super-super-supercomputer even be possible? Might you be unknowingly lying in a gel-filled pod somewhere with circuits in your head, while an ultra-powerful artificial intelligence feeds off the electrical pulses surging between neurons in your brain?

Thankfully, the plot of "The Matrix" is not only implausible, it's actually impossible. At least, that's according to a pair of quantum physicists, Zohar Ringel and Dmitry Kovrizhin, from the University of Oxford and the Hebrew University in Israel. They crunched the numbers and found that the computing power needed to simulate the universe all the way down to the quantum level would require a memory built from more atoms than there are in the universe itself.

Comment: Do we live in the Matrix?

      Read More...
Health

Researchers use gene therapy to combat weight gain and insulin resistance in mice


Science Mag
Sun, 15 Oct 2017 17:14 UTC
fat and skinny mouse
"By increasing BMP4, we can increase the metabolic rate, but we only see this in initially lean mice. Overweight mice proved to have a BMP4 resistance, which is also an important finding," says Jenny Hoffmann, first author of the article and active at the Lundberg Laboratory for Diabetes Research.

She recently earned her PhD in medicine with a thesis focused on BMP4, Bone Morphogenetic Protein 4, and how it regulates white, beige and brown fat in the body. White fat cells store and release fat, brown fat cells burn fat and produce heat, and beige fat cells, which are located within the white fat, can burn fat upon activation. BMP4 has important functions during fetal development, but has proven to play an especially important role in the development of fat cells.

In one of the studies, cells from human fat biopsies were used and the other two studies used adult mice that were given BMP4 gene therapy. In the current study, the mice were given a high-fat, more energy-rich diet, at the same time that they were injected with a harmless virus that carried BMP4, which targets the liver and spreads from there.
      Read More...
Heart

Advantages of breast feeding: Explanation of a molecular mechanism


Scienmag
Sun, 15 Oct 2017 00:00 UTC
Molecular mechanism
© Kanazawa University
Background

Oxytocin is a peptide hormone important in interpreting and reading another person's mind and in establishing good communication with others. It is therefore considered to be indispensable to the development of the social brain. Oxytocin synthesized in the brain is secreted into the entire brain and into the blood.

Mother's milk contains various nutrients, including oxytocin, which is derived from the blood. The digestive tract forms a barrier to avoid uptake of undesirable macromolecules, the gut closure, soon after birth. Therefore, it was thought that oxytocin would not be freely permeable from the digestive tract. On the other hand, the oxytocin level in the blood of babies drinking mother's milk has been found to be elevated, suggesting oxytocin could somehow be transported even in the presence of such a barrier.

Breast feeding has been recommended by the WHO since 2007 because of its positive effects on babies' short-term and long term health, but breast-feeding for 12 months has been decreasing. On the other hand, production of powdered milk has increased year after year, forming a 7 trillion dollar market worldwide. In the United States, 13% of babies are born prematurely, and the number of babies around the globe who are born prematurely or with a very low body weight is approximately 15 million annually. The importance is now recognized of giving those babies colostrum and raising them with mother's milk.

Thus, the importance of breast feeding is now well recognized; however, information about oxytocin, which is necessary for development of the social brain for communication with others, has been fragmentary. Oxytocin in the mother's blood is transferred to the milk. It was thought that the uptake of oxytocin from mother's milk through the digestive tract should take place although the underlying mechanisms remained unknown.

Comment: See also: Research suggests: Modern parenting may hinder brain development

      Read More...
Eye 1

'Waste product' of the retina fuels part of the eyes

Elizabeth Pennisi
Science
Fri, 13 Oct 2017 02:33 UTC
Eye Ecosystem
© iStock.com/AlexAndrews
The eye is an ecosystem, with its different parts relying on each other to survive.
One man's trash is another man's treasure, even at the level of the cell. That's where-according to new research-a waste product of the retina fuels part of the eye that powers the rods and cones that help us sense light. Without this waste, that part of the eye "steals" glucose from the retina, leading to the death of retinal cells and likely vision loss. The finding could help explain why eyesight degenerates with age-and in diseases such as macular degeneration and diabetes.

"It's almost a revolutionary concept" that there is such a tight coupling between the two parts of the eye, says Stephen Tsang, a retina specialist at Columbia University who was not involved in the work.

Rods and cones are very active, and they need a lot of energy to do their jobs. Exactly how they get this energy has long been a mystery. In previous studies, researchers showed that a layer of cells beneath the retina, the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), ferries glucose from the blood to the retina. But it was unclear why the RPE didn't keep the glucose for itself.

After a decade of study, biochemist James Hurley at the University of Washington in Seattle and his colleagues have now shown that the retina's rods and cones burn the glucose, convert leftovers into a fuel called lactate, and then feed that back to the RPE. "There is a growing consensus that no cell exists on its own in complex tissues like the retina," says Martin Friedlander, an ophthalmologist at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, who was not involved with the new work.
      Read More...
Cow

New study shows Baltic clams and worms release as much greenhouse gas as 20,000 dairy cows

Anthony Watts
Watts Up With That
Fri, 13 Oct 2017 23:38 UTC
Cow releases methane
New study shows that oceans with worms and clams enhance the release of methane into the atmosphere up to eight times more than oceans without them.

Scientists have shown that ocean clams and worms are releasing a significant amount of potentially harmful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

The team, from Cardiff University and Stockholm University, have shown that the ocean critters are producing large amounts of the strongest greenhouse gases - methane and nitrous oxides - from the bacteria in their guts.

Methane gas is making its way into the water and then finally out into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming - methane has 28 times greater warming potential than carbon dioxide.

Comment: See also: Greenhouse gas-eating bacteria discovered deep in subglacial Antarctic lake

      Read More...
Microscope 2

Researchers reveal enzyme behind immune cell response


Science Magazine
Fri, 13 Oct 2017 00:00 UTC
Researchers
© Monash University
Monash University researchers have revealed the role played by an enzyme that is pivotal to the process of clearing infection in the body. Moreover, they suggest that the enzyme may be a potential target for drug development to block the types of inappropriate or excessive cell behaviour that occur in cancer and autoimmunity.

The production of antibodies - proteins secreted into our blood that neutralise invaders such as bacteria and viruses - is one of the immune system's most important ways of protecting us from infections.

But the immune cells that ultimately make or secrete the antibody - a type of white blood cell called B-cells or B-lymphocytes - need to change significantly to do this. They have to be activated, proliferate and change their function, all of which requires significant remodeling of the machinery of the cell.

Researchers from Monash's Central Clinical School led by Professor David Tarlinton, Head of the Immune Memory Laboratory, discovered that an enzyme called PRMT1 is behind this remodeling.
      Read More...
Brain

Brain imaging studies skewed by non-representative sample groups lead to errors in understanding brain development


Medical Express
Thu, 12 Oct 2017 00:00 UTC
brain scan images
Any scientist who studies groups of people knows that the characteristics of the "sample"-the group of people selected for the study-can profoundly impact the study's findings. To produce the most accurate findings, a study group ought to be as similar as possible to the people in the larger population you want to say something about.

A new UC San Francisco-led study shows that failure to follow this basic principle of population science-a common complaint about research in the cognitive sciences-can profoundly skew the results of brain imaging studies, leading to errors that may be throwing off neuroscientists' understanding of normal brain development.

"Much of what we know about how the brain develops comes from samples that don't look like the broader U.S. at all," said Kaja LeWinn, ScD, an epidemiologist and assistant professor of psychiatry at UCSF, member of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, and lead author of the new study. "We would never try to understand the burden of other health conditions, like cardiovascular disease, in a sample with much higher socioeconomic status than the U.S. population as a whole, for instance."
      Read More...
Microscope 2

Newly discovered genes critical for hearing will provide insight into causes of hearing loss in humans


Medical Express
Thu, 12 Oct 2017 00:00 UTC
coding region eukaryotic DNA
© National Human Genome Research Institute
This image shows the coding region in a segment of eukaryotic DNA.
Fifty-two previously unidentified genes that are critical for hearing have been found by testing over 3,000 mouse genes. The newly discovered genes will provide insights into the causes of hearing loss in humans, say scientists from Medical Research Council (MRC) Harwell, who led the analysis by the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium (IMPC).

The study, published in Nature Communications, tested 3,006 strains of 'knock-out' mice for signs of hearing loss. 'Knock-out' mice have one gene from their genome inactivated, which helps researchers to uncover the functions of that gene. The IMPC aims to generate a 'knock-out' mouse for every gene in the mouse genome.

The hearing thresholds of the knock-out mice were assessed with rising volumes of sound at five different frequencies - mice were considered hearing impaired if they could not hear the quieter sounds for two or more frequencies.

They identified 67 genes that were associated with hearing loss, of which 52 had not been previously linked with hearing loss. The genes identified varied in how they affected hearing - effects ranged from mild to severe hearing loss or resulted in difficulties at lower or higher frequencies.
      Read More...
Brain

Paradox of perception: Human brain remembers visual features in reverse order than it detects them


Medical Express
Mon, 09 Oct 2017 00:00 UTC
Visual depiction brain encoding
© Ning Qian/Columbia's Zuckerman Institute
Visual depiction of one- and two-line tasks that participants were asked to complete and that was key to the paper's findings.
Scientists at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute have contributed to solving a paradox of perception, literally upending models of how the brain constructs interpretations of the outside world. When observing a scene, the brain first processes details-spots, lines and simple shapes-and uses that information to build internal representations of more complex objects, like cars and people. But when recalling that information, the brain remembers those larger concepts first to then reconstruct the details-representing a reverse order of processing. The research, which involved people and employed mathematical modeling, could shed light on phenomena ranging from eyewitness testimony to stereotyping to autism.

This study was published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The order by which the brain reacts to, or encodes, information about the outside world is very well understood," said Ning Qian, PhD, a neuroscientist and a principal investigator at Columbia's Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. "Encoding always goes from simple things to the more complex. But recalling, or decoding, that information is trickier to understand, in large part because there was no method-aside from mathematical modeling-to relate the activity of brain cells to a person's perceptual judgment."
      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts